A new species of Ischnostomiella Krikken, 1978 from the Limpopo Province of South Africa (Scarabaeidae: Cetoniinae, Xiphoscelidini)

Abstract

A female putative specimen of “Ischnostoma luridipennis Burmeister, 1842” from northern South Africa (Limpopo) was recently studied by the authors among material traced and housed temporarily in the Windhoek Museum (Namibia), as part of an old and unrecorded loan from the Zoology Museum of the Lund University (Sweden). A close analysis of this specimen has revealed that it actually represents a new species of Ischnostomiella Krikken, 1978, here described as I. rudebecki sp. nov. The new species differs from the two other species currently known in this genus, I. denticeps Krikken, 1978 and I. werneri Beinhundner, 2005, mainly by its remarkable testaceous-orange colour, its clypeal U-shape, the poorly developed elytral costae and the complete absence of any brown cretaceous maculation. The species appears to be myrmecophilous, the holotype having been retrieved from a pugnacious ant [Anoplolepis custodiens (Smith, 1858)] nest, and the known distribution thus far is the lowveld of the Limpopo Province in north-eastern South Africa.